Abandoned

Aaron Lam

The Enemy
By Charlie Higson

What does life mean to you? Do you treasure it or would you cast it aside as if it is nothing. Would you treasure what you have left after losing everything? Charlie Higson expresses this feeling through the story of a group of small children. The children were young, were they didn't even reach past adolescence. The Enemy by Charlie Higson demonstrates life through a dystopian environment in the perspective of children. This shows the dependency that the children have at a young age and how incapable they could be in dire situations. Taking place in post-apocalyptic London, scattered groups of children are struggling to survive. The story introduces many groups of children, having only shown living adults once. The only pair of living adults turned out to be cannibals. The book ends with the perspective of a zombie, where it introduces a zombie that has some semblance of consciousness. The zombie thinks, “Car. Road. Shop. Kid. Blood. Eat.” (438). This creates a somewhat deeper meaning to the zombies purpose, as why would they be thinking of the kids.

The post-apocalyptic story usually has someone type of twist in order to make it unique from others. In the case of The Enemy, Charlie Higson uses the perspective of children and only children in order to convey the story. With this perspective, the reader will experience more naive characters. The lack of experience or sense that the children have will make the story have more tension. In recent parts of the story, the characters are acting out of their own emotions rather than the benefit. According to the deuteragonist, Maxie, she says, “we’d all be a lot happier if we got out of this place.” (392). She states this after arriving to an area under strict supervision by a different group of kids. She does not appreciate another group in charge of hers, causing her to leave with her group. This puts her entire group in danger because they had just left one of the few safe areas in London. There are children as young as 6 in the group and it would put them in extreme danger if they were to travel around a zombie-infested area. The characters are difficult to relate to due to their brash actions as well as lack of sense in some situations. Maxie had demonstrated this behavior again, where she left the safe place in a state of discord. As Maxie and her group left, she shouted, “Come and get it, you sad losers!” (435). She had potentially left another group of kids in danger due to her own personal opinions. She had released a small group of zombies in order for her group to leave the area. The book creates an interesting set up, but fails to create likeable characters.

The book presents itself as a decent representation of a post-apocalyptic story. The characters provide no deep motive in their actions, however. A character would act on a whim or based on their emotions, which is not a good motivation to towards their actions. The concept of the story is interesting as well as how the characters accurately fit the concept. Children in this story tend to be arrogant and act according to what they think. The children themselves don’t appeal simply because they are just young kids.

Citations:

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